A primary school in North Wales have been announced the winners of this year’s Great Bug Hunt competition. This national competition is run by schoolscience.co.uk with The Bug Man, Martin Rapley and aims to take science learning out of the classroom and bring it to life in the outdoors. Children taking part in the competition spent their time exploring habitats before recording their observations in photos, pictures and poems.

Ysgol yr Ysgob Primary School in Wales won the top prize, a bug day at their school where they got to come close up with creepy crawlies such as scorpions and tarantulas. The children in Class three had been learning about habitats during this last term. As part of their work they carried out bug hunts in the school wildlife area using pitfall and tea towel traps to collect and identify the bugs. They used this information for graphs and what these could tell them about the conditions the bugs liked to live in. They each then researched one of the bugs found to produce amazing information sheets.

Marianne Cutler, ASE’s Executive Director of Professional and Curriculum Innovation, said: “The Great Bug Hunt competition is a brilliant way of bringing science to life for children and shows you can go on a journey of discovery in your own backyard. Not only does the competition do a great job of capturing children’s imagination, it also fits in well with the science curriculum. Using the natural environment when teaching is an important part of science education and something the ASE strongly advocates through its Outdoor Science Working Group.”

In second place Kinson Primary School in Bournemouth won three terrariums. Birmingham Primary School, Cherry Orchard School won the prize for the best photographic entry as chosen by The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Ian Bedford, one of the judges and a Research entomologist and manager of the John Innes Entomology facility and entomology team said “The photos that were submitted for this year's bug hunt competition were of a very high standard and judging the winners was not easy. However, we eventually made our decision by not only taking into account the quality and composition of the image, but also the skill in capturing some of the bugs that usually don't sit still for long! Well done to everyone who took part!”